


Shapeshifters

by FelidArachnid



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Family, Monsters, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-21 23:33:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15568797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelidArachnid/pseuds/FelidArachnid
Summary: Lulu Bell helps Jasdevi manifest his new body





	Shapeshifters

**Author's Note:**

> just thought it would be an interesting interaction. I have a lot of headcanons about the Noah and their powers and stuff, all of them are probably wrong.

The first thing Lulu Bell noticed was the hands – never mind that they were too long, too jointed…there was just simply too many of them. Then she saw the teeth, and how they brimmed over the many gaping jaws, so sharp that the lips could not close safely over them. 

She groped unconsciously with her left hand, fingers closing around the soft material of the Earl’s sleeve. “Who is that?”

“He will need your help,” the Earl replied enigmatically. 

“My help?” Her eyes sought his face, wide and nervous, but still trusting. She stared up at the man who she saw as her saviour, her mentor and her master. “I don’t understand.”

“He has never changed form before. It is…difficult, I think, for him.” As the Earl spoke, the figure gave a spluttering groan and turned slowly to face them in the dark, its clawed hands hushing over the bedsheets and eyes glowing in the darkened room. There was a deep, guttural snarl before it sank back down again, apparently overcome by the effort. 

“Hush, Disciple,” crooned the Earl, gliding forwards and running a gloved hand over the long, matted tangle of blonde hair. “We can help you.”

And that was how Lulu Bell met Jasdevi. 

For the first few hours, she did not know what he was; she supposed he was another shapeshifter like herself, but one that was terribly ill, or else did not yet understand his powers. Since he’d been apparently unable to speak, she’d tried assuming various forms but this made him upset and fractious, so they sat in silence. It was only after Jasdevi finally fell into a restless sleep that she’d seen him dissolve into what he truly was – two small boys curled around one another with thin, stick-like limbs. 

After that, she understood better, and she resolved to be kinder. 

For her, shapeshifting came as easily as thought; her body simply knew to follow her mind, and she delighted in its flexibility and the way her being dropped into a form as coolly as water fills a pitcher. She could not imagine what it must feel like to assume a new form under direction of two wholly independent minds. And she gradually came to realise that the hardest part was in fact that Jasdevi simply did not _know_ what his new form was meant to be. He seemed to have a vague idea but it kept getting tainted by monstrous features. 

It was after a long hot summer’s day that Lulu Bell had dutifully retired to Jasdevi’s room once more, to resume her evening vigil as instructed by the Earl. Lately they had taken to sitting in silence once more, as the last few visits he had turned violent and hostile at her attempts at showing him shapeshifting. She privately thought it might be because the darker of the two boys was finally finding his self-confidence again. 

“How do you do it?” the echoing voice rasped out of the shadows, after several long hours. He must have successfully manifested a mouth; she wondered how much effort it had cost him. 

“Do what?” she answered, turning her catlike eyes upon him. 

“Change,” he said, and the word dropped heavily into the thick air, sounding dreadful and terrifying in his odd, double-layered voice. 

He had never asked her a question before. Lulu Bell considered carefully before answering. “I think…my body just knows the forms…I just…accept them.”

“Accept,” he repeated, and she wasn’t sure if he knew the word or was just parroting it. 

“Your body will know its form too,” she urged, feeling bolder. “And when it does, you will be able to accept it.”

Jasdevi considered this. “We – I have – never had form before.” He blinked several pairs of eyes. 

“It is in there. Somewhere,” said Lulu Bell consolingly. 

An angry expression flitted over his face, and for a second she saw his skin tremble as the two entities fought one another. She didn’t like it when this happened; it felt like she was about to see his entire face split in two before her very eyes. 

“Show me again,” he whispered, and his two voices sounded even more distinctly separate than before. His fingernails dug into the bedsheets.

Obligingly, Lulu Bell leapt light and cat-formed from her chair to the bed. She did not even flinch as he reached a bony hand out and rubbed the fur between her head just a little too hard. Once he released her, she stepped daintily over the bedcovers, her body lengthening as she did so until Tyki Mikk was lounging languidly against the pillows. She’d only taken to adopting his form recently, as a means of torment, and it amused her more than she cared to admit. It tended to confuse Jasdevi though, so she quickly ducked down and curled back towards him as long jet-black serpent. 

Jasdevi watched as Lulu Bell coiled up his long greyish arms, her tongue darting over the skin. He raised two hands and she flowed between them like ink, her scales catching the candlelight beautifully. 

“Water,” he said, as she crept over his shoulder and round his neck, her head disappearing into the mane of blonde hair. When her blunt little nose reappeared and she raised it in a questioning gesture, he grinned, teeth sticking at odd angles through the flesh of his cheeks

“You are like water,” he said, allowing her to flow into his palm again. “Maybe that’s why you can take form so easily.” Her coils wrapped themselves around his wrist, tightening slightly so that he appeared to be wearing an elaborate scaly bracelet. 

She shifted into a large glossy butterfly and fluttered over to another hand. He laughed, in two separate voices, as she kissed each fingertip in turn before alighting on his upturned wrist, her scarlet wings flexing gently. 

“When I find my form,” he said haltingly, his two voices fighting for dominion in that sharp-toothed mouth. “I will know myself. I will be perfect, and strong.” Lulu Bell laid her wings flat and still. He spoke the words like a mantra, as though by saying them he could make them true. 

“Not like you,” he continued baldly. Lulu Bell turned to face him, and became a glossy back scorpion. “You don’t know yourself at all.”

Instantly, she raised her tail in trembling readiness, her tiny pinprick feet gripping his skin and her claws snipping threateningly. Her meaning was clear – he had offended her. 

Jasdevi didn’t appear to register this – he raised his wrist a little higher and stared at her through several pairs of large, limpid eyes. “Jumping from form to form…you must be frightened to stay in one place.”

There was a flash and Jasdevi cried out in pain, a row of long scarlet scratches etched across his cheek. He clapped a hand to his face as the black cat’s tail whipped around the door and out of sight.


End file.
